TITLE    : Shemales: An Appreciation Pt. 03
STORYID  : shemales-an-appreciation-pt-03
SUMMARY  : Why are shemales so damned hot?  Here's another reason. . .
AUTHOR   : Cal Y. Pygia@lit
DATE     : 2009-09-30
CATEGORY : reviews-and-essays
FLAGS    : 
TAGS     : |shemale|tranny|ladyboy|transsexual|transgender|hot|heterosexual|homosexual|bisexual|appreciation|


Cynthia A. Freeland's discussion of the androgynous nature of Victor von Frankenstein's monster (in The Naked and the Undead: Evil and the Appeal of Horror), sheds light on my topic, shemales.



Building upon the opposition of supposedly "masculine" and feminine traits listed below, Freeland argues, quite convincingly, that Frankenstein's "Creature," despite being described as a male and desiring that his creator build him a woman of his own is, according to the very traits themselves, at least as much feminine as masculine:



MALE&#x2014;FEMALE 



Culture&#x2014;nature



Reason&#x2014;nature



Mind&#x2014;body



Master&#x2014;slave



Reason&#x2014;matter (physicality)



Rationality&#x2014;animality (nature)



Human&#x2014;nature (non-human)



Civilized&#x2014;primitive (nature)



Production&#x2014;reproduction (nature)



Self&#x2014;other



According to Freeland, "the Creature symbolizes animality, primitiveness, and physicality," whereas the "excessively male" Frankenstein himself "represents the forces of civilization, rationality, production, and culture." The Creature is also "other," ostracized as he is from human camaraderie, whereas the scientist "is part of a happy family and has prospects of marriage."



Freeland asks, rather pointedly, whether the monster can truly be regarded as male, adding that it "begins with a good and innocent nature," which contradicts the idea that it is wild or "primitive," and is "identified with the feminine in his desire for family and social bonds" and "may even be a personification of Nature's female power." Frankenstein himself, on the other hand, is obviously associated with many of the qualities of masculinity, such as culture, rationality, mind, mastery, humanity, civilization, production, and selfhood.



Indeed, Freeland declares, "We could even propose that the Creature's very monstrousness is a result of his gender and moral indeterminacy. He exhibits a combination of the goods and evils associated with each gender: a desire for domesticity coupled with an extreme thirst for knowledge, the raw power of feminine Nature as against the uncaring violence of men. The slipperiness of the monster's status regarding good and evil and the uneasy gender affiliations in the novel reflect his monstrously undecidable, unnatural state between life and death."



Much of what Freeland argues concerning Frankenstein's monster, of course, can be likewise proclaimed regarding shemales, or "chicks with dicks" (or, more accurately still, "dudes with boobs"). Shemales are gender benders and, as such, they contradict the neat categories of gender and sex that scientists have erected, suggesting, thereby, that the division of humanity into just two opposing genders and sexes is akin to the either-or fallacy. The division presents society and the individuals of which society is composed with the false dilemma of a false dichotomy.



Men have female hormones, and women have male hormones. None of us is entirely one sex (or gender) or the other; we are both. When we try to renounce part of ourselves, we behave irrationally and may suffer a fate similar to that of Frankenstein, for, as Freeland warns her readers, the "excessive rationality" of mad scientists like Frankenstein "becomes effectively irrationality."



The etymology of the word "monster" suggests that dual-sex creatures such as hermaphrodites, who were considered to be monsters, were regarded as harbingers of doom. As the Online Etymology Dictionary declares, "monster" originally referred to "signs or omens of impending evil." Although not exactly hermaphrodites, shemales are a close modern equivalent to such "monsters."



In an increasingly secular world, such creatures may no longer seem to represent warnings of divine wrath, as hermaphrodites once did, but they do represent a living, breathing rebuke, as it were, to the tendency of the rational (male) mind to categorize everything according to a system of binary opposites that explains away more than it explains. As I observe in "Thank Heaven For Little Girly Boys," shemales, by sporting both feminine breasts and masculine genitals, confuse everything in the most delightful ways! This confusion is a needed corrective to the belief that everyone is either male or female/masculine or feminine, for, like the euglena, which is neither wholly plant nor wholly animal, the shemale is neither wholly man nor wholly woman, neither entirely male nor entirely female.



If males and females ground us (to some extent) in maleness, masculinity, femaleness, and femininity, shemales, bless their hearts, free us, to some extent, from these same moorings, letting us understand that our view of sex and gender is as much invented (or socially constructed) as it is "natural" and that, therefore, it is not unnatural to consider oneself a mix of the two genders and sexes. If it is not unnatural to be both male and female and both masculine and feminine, it is also not unnatural to be attracted only to men whether one is himself a man or only to women whether one is herself a woman or to a member of the "opposite" sex or to both men and women (and, indeed, shemales).



In two previous installments, I considered reasons as to why shemales are so damned hot. One reason for their erotic appeal, I ventured, is their freeing of men from the responsibilities of fatherhood. Since shemales, by nature, cannot be impregnated, men can use them as they please, without fear that, because of a brief dalliance, they will be called upon to surrender their freedom for the rest of their lives. There are hundreds of thousands of shemales in the w/rld, many of whom are as beautiful as any genetic woman and many more of whom are at least as attractive as the average woman. They may not have vaginas, but their anuses are perfectly suitable substitutes. Indeed, they may be superior, because they are tighter, do not menstruate, and cannot be impregnated. All they lack is lubricant, which can be supplied, easily enough, through applied science, or technology, in the form of a tube of anal lube.



Another reason for the popularity of shemales, I suggested, is that they are similar enough to men (while, at the same time, being different enough from men) to facilitate free and easy communication between minds that understand the male (and the masculine) mindset.



Finally, as I argue in this last installment, shemales also free men and women to be men and women who are both men and women and who can prefer as sex partners of the same sex, the "opposite" sex, the third sex (if shemales can be supposed to represent a third sex), or any combination thereof.



If shemales are not better than females, they're certainly desirable and suitable substitutes or alternatives to women. Is there any wonder men and women should not appreciate them? Speaking for myself, I can't find even one reason. 

